This is the second in a series of the 5 Rehab Contractor styles I’ve catagorized, how to identify them, what to watch for, and how to manage them. The 5 categories are The Salesman, The Perfectionist, The Investor/Rehabber, The Snob, and Hose A & Hose B. This is the second part where we discuss “The Perfectionist”
“The Perfectionist”
The Perfectionist is extremely competent, friendly, fair and honest. You may not tell you have a perfectionist during the first meeting like you can with “The Salesman“. The perfectionist has a calm and competent approach, is agreeable with what you want in your rehab and even endorses your ideas as good ideas. He has a Rolodex of subcontractors and vendors he trusts and will remain loyal to those to a fault.
The first sign you know you have a perfectionist is when he takes 2 weeks to get you his bid. You might even have to ask him once or twice when to expect the bid. When you finally get it it will be complete and the estimates will be accurate. As you work together, he will be competent and he will do a good job.
The Perfectionist will work for the rehab investor IF:
- You have a small project
- You have plenty of time in which to finish the project
- Quality in workmanship is very important to your end buyer
- You are rehabbing a house for yourself
- You want good detail in both the project and in the invoicing
The Perfectionist won’t work for the rehab investor IF:
- You are using hard money on your project. I had a Perfectionist contractor and it didn’t matter how many times I told him the cost of time. He seemed to sympathize with me, as he is a gentle person, but he still never “got it”. It didn’t occur to him that Home Depot cabinets, where may be more expensive, would save me $2,000 by having the project done that much sooner.
- You aren’t local to the project. The Perfectionist likes to do a lot of the work themselves and if not perfect, will spend extra time getting it “just right”. You will need to check in on a daily basis to keep the project running on time. Asking for an expected end date with him is not enough, because he will be wrong. You may even have to go over a project plan with timelines and milestones.
- Expect the Perfectionist to handle any change order in great detail.
Should you chose to hire the Perfectionist Contractor, plan to set aside some time to educate him on the philosophies of rehabbing houses for profits. You will have to explain how “good enough” is “good enough” and that the outcome doesn’t need to be perfect. You pull him away from his comfort zone by insisting on finding better prices elsewhere. You will make him very uncomfortable checking in on him every day, and when you ask him to put more workers on the project he will claim everyone will fall over each other with more workers.
Do you have any Perfectionist Contractors in your experiences?
New blogs at http://jeannorton.com/blog2